https://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1779223A 28-Year Follow-Up of Adults With a History of Moderate Phonological DisorderLinguistic and Personality Results1992-10-01T00:00:00Research ArticleSusan Felsenfeld

Research Article | October 01, 1992

A 28-Year Follow-Up of Adults With a History of Moderate Phonological DisorderLinguistic and Personality Results

The present investigation is a follow-up to a longitudinal speech and academic study involving approximately 400 normally developing children begun in 1960 by Mildred Templin. From this large data base, the present project invited the participation of two groups of subjects (now aged 32 to 34): (a) 24 adults with a documented history of moderately severe phonological disorder that persisted at least through the end of first grade (probands) and (b) 28 adults from the same birth cohort and schools who were known to have had at least average articulation skills over the same period (controls). Results of follow-up testing revealed that the proband adults performed significantly more poorly than the control adults on all of the administered measures of articulation, expressive language, and receptive language. Results obtained from a screening of nonverbal reasoning ability were equivocal. On a questionnaire measure of personality, both groups scored well within the normal range for the dimensions of extroversion and neuroticism when compared to the test’s normative sample. These results have been interpreted as suggesting that although many adults with a childhood history of delayed phonological development will continue to experience linguistic outcomes that are less favorable than those of controls, their performance in selected nonlanguage domains (e.g., nonverbal reasoning, personality) will be far more typical of the general population.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Annetta Larsen, Jo Prouty, and, In particular, Mildred Templin. Without each of these individuals, this project would have been virtually impossible to complete. Portions of this work were presented at the annual meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in St. Louis, MO, November 1989 and at the annual meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association, Charlottesville, VA, June 1989. This research was supported by NINCDS Grant NS-25633 and a Grant-in-Aid from the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota.

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